


Go to Earth, they said...

by depraved_trash



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Divergent, Gem Egg Hell, Gemlings, Gen, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-08 15:45:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4311078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depraved_trash/pseuds/depraved_trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apparently, this is a thing now. So here's my take on it.</p>
<p>"It was one thing to be stranded alone on a miserable backwater planet where the only local gems were actively trying to stop you from doing your job. It was quite another to be doing the same thing with five tiny gemlings to look after."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know. Just read Cladogenesis, by Cthrag_Yaska. It's waay better.

"Crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap."

They were alive. While a very small part of Peridot couldn't help but feel a joyous relief at feeling the movement inside the geodes, a much larger, more rational part of her was busy panicking about how very much this would fuck up her plans.

It was one thing to be stranded alone on a miserable backwater planet where the only local gems were actively trying to stop you from doing your job. It was quite another to be doing the same thing with five tiny gemlings to look after.

\---

Her belly had started to swell within days of her crash-landing on earth, although it had taken her a little while to notice it was happening, preoccupied as she had been by getting the hell away from the Crystal Gems. Flying was far too risky at that point, and it wasn't until her second day of dragging herself through fields full of whatever pointless crops the local humans had felt like inflicting on the landscape that Peridot had noticed something was different. She felt unusually tired, her feet dragging long trails through the dry stalks, her eyelids signalling the strange urge to close and not open again for a long time. Then she'd looked down, and shrieked.

Peridot had never been great in a crisis. Her line wasn't really built for that, anyway. She was a specialist, first and foremost; designed for the operation and maintenance of specific gem technologies and not much else. Her response to those unexpected situations which fell outside of her purview - such as, just to give a random example, finding out you're inexplicably pregnant while stranded on a strange planet - was generally along the lines of:

01 Freak out  
02 Shout at something  
03 Shut down for a bit  
04 Repeat if necessary

Numbers 01-02 were a bit risky in these circumstances, however, so she had to satisfy herself with covering her mouth, giving a muffled scream, and then slumping down onto the ground to stare blankly into space for a bit whilst her mind rattled through all the reasons this situation should be impossible. Gems had once been able to produce their own young, but that was back in the realms of prehistory; besides, sexual reproduction tended to require two sexes - which gems didn't have - not to mention the actual _act_ of sex - which Peridot definitely didn't recall ever happening to her, and was banned on Homeworld anyway.

Given all this, it would have been more logical to assume that she was sick or injured, but somehow, Perdiot _knew_ there were geodes in there, just as she now knew that she was in a lot of trouble if she didn't get to shelter soon. It was time to fire up the propeller, and hope like fuck that none of the native fauna would spot her and try to shoot her down.

\---

She got to the Kindergarten just in time. The pain was making it hard to think, but she managed to drag herself underground just in time before the agony took over. The incident itself took place in a haze of blessed half-consciousness, and Peridot could not have known whether it was days or hours she lay there; only that, when it was all over, she found herself lying on her side, her exhausted body curled around five warm geodes, each one the exact shade of her own gem.


	2. Chapter 2

Having ascertained that the geodes were alive, pressing each one to her cheek to feel the warmth and movement within, Peridot took stock. As weirdly thrilling as it was to know that her babies were alright (for the time being, anyway) she couldn't escape the fact that she was more exhausted than she'd ever been in her life and had _no idea_ how to look after them. Weren't you supposed to keep them warm, or something? _How_ warm? Gem bodies didn't tend to lose much heat, so her body probably wouldn't be enough. She'd have to rig something up.

And behind all this was the constant awareness that she had a job to do before the Crystal Gems caught up with her; a job to which five gemlings would be nothing but a liability.

She knew, intellectually, what she _should_ do in this situation, but for some reason, the idea of simply abandoning the geodes--or worse, destroying them--filled Peridot with inexplicable dread. She felt attached to them in a way she had never experienced before; she could not say why, but their existence seemed more important than her own, and try as she might, she could not rid herself of this feeling.

Maybe there had been some fundamental corruption in her gem. That would certainly explain both the appearance of the geodes and the strange emotions. And yet telling herself this did not do anything to dispel either. Unconsciously, she drew them closer in to her own body, gently hugging them to herself. Each geode was hard and opaque, and roughly the size of her own palm. They seemed to have their own faint warmth, although Peridot had the distinct impression that they were cooling, and the thought worried her.

First things first, then; sort out that heat source. Peridot dragged herself upright, trying to ignore the searing pain in her lower body. Her thoughts were fuzzy and weak, but she managed to drag herself to the upper platform where the Crystal Gems had previously destroyed the main energy source. If she remembered correctly, there was a backup source somewhere that could only be activated on site. It wouldn't be enough to power the whole control centre, but it would suit her purposes for now.

It wasn't long before she had made herself a rudimentary heat lamp on the upper platform, and moved each geode carefully into its light. Satisfied, she slumped down beside them, one arm around the eggs in a protective gesture that surprised her.

Truthfully, she should have been more worried than she was. Peridot wasn't an idiot; this whole situation was weird as fuck, and she knew that deeper into the bowels of the control center lay the Homeworld's old experiments into forced fusion, although none of the subjects should have been active yet. Yet tiredness and pain, and that strange tenderness in the middle of her chest, told her she could afford to rest a while before she moved again. Barely even aware she was doing it, she curled up beside the cluster of geodes again, sheltering them from the rest of the room with her body, and fell into a deep sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short update. I'm posting on the fly!

The next few days (weeks?) passed in a haze of tiredness. Though she had never slept before, Peridot fell into it quickly and gratefully, waking each time to the same muggy orange light and quiet nest of eggs beside her. If she put her hands on them, which she quite frequently did, she could feel them thrumming with life.

Her drained mental state did not allow her much time to think about the situation, and her mission seemed so much less important now, anyway. The rare occasions she could summon the energy to reflect on this slipped away as softly as they came.

And then, one day, she found herself abruptly awake, and more alert than she had been in weeks.

Peridot knew instantly that something was wrong, although she could not have said how. Her first instinct was to check the geodes, turning them over hurriedly but gently in her hands, but all were alive and unmarked. The heat lamp, too, was fine; the auxiliary power source would hold them in good stead for months if necessary. Yet the prickling at the back of her neck told her there was danger nearby.

For the first time since she had lay down there, Peridot turned over and sat up, her vision adjusting to the darkness with ease. The Kindergarten control room was as cold and empty as ever, but there was something about the ceiling that made her feel suddenly claustrophobic, as if it were all at once too close and too low; as if there were something lurking above her which had just started to descend...

Clarity pierced her, a spike of ice. _Shit_ , she thought.

The gem shards. They were up there.

And they were moving.


	4. Chapter 4

_Crap._

She couldn't see them, but she could hear them; a quiet creeping just on the edge of her awareness, like the movements of an insect. How had she not been aware of this problem? This was _literally_ what she had been sent to Earth to check. But there was no time to think about this in too much depth; her first priority was getting the geodes out of here.

With painstaking care, she gathered up each one, as conscious of the need for stealth as she was afraid of dropping them. It felt like she was handling the five most precious objects in the universe, and the thought of breaking them terrified her. After they were safely in her arms, she regarded the heat lamp for a moment before deciding she couldn't risk moving the light in case it attracted the attention of those... _things_.

Peridot had not been alive when the experiments were started. The Crystal War was before her time, and previously, she had regarded the gem clusters with the same detachment as any other part of her work, something to be checked and catalogued and maintained if necessary. Now, they were a direct threat, and the shadows above her seemed to crawl with malevolent life. She kept her eyes on the darkened ceiling, knowing that only a few thin layers of material and technology lay between her and an unknown enemy.

One careful step, then another, her geodes held fast to her chest all the while. If gems had breath, Peridot would have been holding hers. After an eternity of tension, she was finally within reach of the elevator when a crash from behind made her shriek.

She spun round, still backing away toward her escape. Something had erupted through the ceiling, something dark and amorphous and moving, and as it shifted between Peridot and the light of the distant heat lamp, it reached out to her, as if in vengeful yearning...

Peridot let out a strangled scream, jumped back onto the elevator. "Go! Go go go go go go go!" she yelled. She knew it wouldn't make the thing go any faster, but it made her feel better.

As the control room sank out of her sight, she let out a long breath, unconsciously hugging the geodes a little closer. Everything would be fine. Even if the thing decided to follow her, she had a head start, and the important thing was, the geodes were safe.

The elevator stopped at ground level. Peridot turned round.

"Hi, Peridot!" said the Steven.


	5. Chapter 5

For one long moment, Peridot and the Steven regarded each other.

"Are the others with you?" she ventured.

The Steven looked like it was going to shake its head, but then shrugged and nodded instead. Peridot groaned. At least she knew Stevens weren't very good at dissembling. Before she could say anything, however, it caught sight of the geodes in her arms.

"Whatcha got there?" it said, craning up on its tiptoes. "Oh! Are those your babies?" Its face contorted into worry. "Are you going to squish them?"

She glanced around the Kindergarten, searching for good potential spots to hole up with the geodes. She was half-tempted to enlist the Steven's help before she remembered it was still on the side of the Crystal Gems. Oh, speaking of which--

"There she is!"

Peridot yelped, then cowered. There was no way she could run with these things--they were far too precious--so there was really only one other option.

"AaaaAAADON'T HURT ME! I SURRENDER!" she shrieked, dropping into a crouch. The approaching footsteps continued, and Peridot squeezed her eyes shut, body hunched over the geodes in a protective gesture. "STOP!" she heard the Steven yell, and then there was a rush of air against magic as the little... whatever it was... summoned Rose Quartz's shield, although she didn't realize until she opened her eyes to see its gentle pink light on the ground before her.

"Put the shield down, Steven," she heard the Fusion say. "She can't be trusted."

"Guys, come on, she surrendered already! Look, she has babies!"

"What?" The Pearl's voice was low and terse. "Is she... did she _reactivate_ this place?"

"No! They're mine!" blurted out Peridot. "They're geodes! I don't know what happened, I swear! Just please don't hurt them!"

There was a pregnant pause. So to speak.

"Alright, Peridot," said the Fusion, finally. "Hand over the eggs. We're taking you in."


	6. Chapter 6

"Incredible," the Pearl whispered, as she picked up the smallest geode with gentle fingers and turned it over. "I've never even seen these before."

"I have," Garnet told her, "But not for a long, long time."

Seeing the Crystal Gems handle her babies made Peridot agitated, to say the least. She had to keep telling herself that this was the lesser of two evils. Running away would risk putting them in the line of fire, or falling, or simply dropping the precious eggs. Even at the point of the Pearl's sword, Peridot had struggled to allow Garnet to hold one of them on their way back to the temple--"To ensure you don't try to escape". And it had worked. Despite that small voice in Peridot's head screaming to know why she was being so _stupid_ , she had allowed them to imprison her in a hastily-constructed level of the temple, a large black cage in the centre of an even larger grey room.

It genuinely felt like her instincts had gone _nuts_.

"Geodes need warmth," Garnet had said, "Warmth, and you. They'll feed off your energy, which is why you're tired." And so the geodes were placed on a heated cushion just outside the bars. Peridot's arms were too wide to fit through, but if she put her cheek right up to them, she could just about feel them thrumming. As the crystal gems discussed the issue of guard duty, and the Steven gazed starry-eyed at the clutch of eggs before it, Peridot pushed herself as close as possible against the bars, and wondered why she wanted to cry.

"I've seen this before," the Fusion was saying. "She won't be a threat until the gemlings are old enough to look after themselves. It's a powerful instinct. She couldn't cause them harm even if she wanted to."

"How do we know Homeworld hasn't managed to override that?" the Pearl replied, gently placing the geode back on its cushion. "For all we know, she could be faking this whole thing just to catch us off guard."

Peridot snorted derisively. "Believe me, nobody wants to be here less than I do," she said. The Crystal Gems ignored her. Garnet continued.

"Keeping a watch will deter her from trying anything, but as long as the geodes are out of her reach, we don't have to worry."

"I don't see why we can't just squish 'em and bubble her," muttered the Amethyst. Peridot sat up abruptly.

"They're baby gems. None of this is their fault." To Peridot's surprise, Garnet picked one up and smoothed her hand over it lovingly. "If we hurt them, we're no better than Homeworld."

She couldn't see past the Fusion's visor, but Peridot had the oddest feeling that Garnet's eyes met hers for a moment as she put the geode back down. Peridot opened her mouth to thank her, but quickly suppressed the urge. She had _some_ pride left.

"Can I be first on watch?" piped up the Steven. All four Gems in the room looked at it in surprise.

"Are you sure that's safe?" ventured the Pearl. Garnet seemed to think about this for a moment, then nodded.

"He'll be fine."

The Steven seemed ecstatic at this. As Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl left the room, it rested its elbows on the ground and gazed at the geodes again. "Baaaabies," it whispered.

Despite herself, Peridot couldn't help but stifle a smile.


	7. Chapter 7

"I didn't know gems laid eggs."

The Steven had been gazing at the geodes for quite a while before it spoke. Peridot considered ignoring it, but it wasn't as if she had anything else to do.

"Me neither," she admitted. "Well, not any more."

"Did they used to?"

"Oh, sure. But that was hundreds of thousands of years ago." She sat up and idly formed her fingers into a holographic screen to show him. A rudimentary timeline scrolled across it. "We evolved away from oviparity shortly after we developed the technology for artificial crystalline abiogenesis..."

The creature giggles. "You sound like Pearl."

"Well, yeah. That's what my design was based on. I'm the improved version," Peridot added, with a hint of smugness.

The Steven looked pensively at the geodes. "So, um, do the eggs have a dad?"

"A what?"

"Uh, you know. A father?"

Peridot dismissed the screen. "I don't have either of those words in my database. What are you talking about?"

"Did you and another gem... you know?" The Steven's expression was half-amused, half-embarrassed. Peridot stared at him.

"Did we what?" she replied, uncomprehendingly. Then; "Oh. Ew, no. That's disgusting!"

"I'm glad we agree on something." The Steven seemed about to ask another question when the sound of something cracking caused them both to freeze. Peridot was the first to break the silence, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Is that...?"

The Steven nodded mutely. Both seemed to hold their breath, although technically Peridot didn't need to breathe at all. There was another small series of cracks, and then a soft hum began to emanate from the smallest of the clutch. Shards of something brittle fell away from it and collapsed into dust as soon as they hit the pillow. Buried inside the geode--which seemed to consist of solid rock, rather than the hollow shell one might have expected--was a bright green Gem just a little smaller than Peridot's own. And it was glowing.


	8. Chapter 8

Peridot and the Steven watched, enraptured, as the rest of the outer shell cracked apart, lightly coating the cushions--as well as the other geodes--in fine dust. Whether this new development was a positive one, Peridot had no idea, but then the gem inside began to rise of its own accord, and she knew a regeneration sequence when she saw one.

A cloud of light, shapeless at first, began to solidify around the rising gem. Short, chubby arms emerged, then legs, and Peridot found it difficult to get her head around the creature's proportions until she realised that it was no larger than the palm of her hand.

Then the rays of light disappeared, leaving behind what Peridot could only describe as a tiny, truncated version of, herself, colouring and all. For some reason, the sight seemed to tug from her an impulse to reach out through the bars toward it, and her inability to do so was painful.

"Catch her!" she cried, as the gemling began to gently descend, and although past experience of regeneration told her it would probably not be harmed, it was still a relief to see it settle in the Steven's open hands.

It seemed to be curled in on itself, knees bent, arms hugged to its own chest, and for one terrible moment it lay with its eyes closed, silent and unmoving. Steven regarded it with reverence and uncertainty.

"Is it... sleeping?" it whispered.

Peridot felt her eyes fill with tears. "Please give me my baby," she blurted out without thinking. Some strange urge to hold the creature close had risen within her, too strong for her to question now.

Carefully, Steven cupped the gemling in his hands and passed it through the bars, and they were just small enough to fit. Silence descended as Peridot drew it close to her chest. "Please be okay," she found herself saying, and then, whether led by instinct or the first stirrings of grief, she closed her eyes and lowered her forehead to touch the baby's tiny gem to her own.

Something reached out and grabbed her nose.

She jerked backwards. The gemling's eyes were open, and one tiny arm with five tiny floating fingers, miniature copies of her own in every respect, had been extended toward her. Deprived of its catch, it let out a high-pitched beep of frustration.

Peridot felt like she was about to melt from the inside out. Without even thinking about it, she gave the gemling one of her own fingers to hold, and the fact that its immediate reaction was to try and chew on it did not endear it to her any less. How could a Gem be so tiny? And how could her love for this strange new creature be so instant and so strong? Peridot did not know, but of this she was certain--the world had changed for her, and there was no going back.


End file.
